"But who's going to tell her?" Selwyn's voice was querulously eager.
"I thought perhaps you might find—find—"
"I did." I nodded in his flushed face. "I don't think it will be necessary to tell her anything. She's very much in love, but not with Harrie."
Selwyn sat upright. A certain rigidity of which he is capable stiffened him. He looked much, but said nothing.
"I've had an interesting time this afternoon. I never wanted to be a detective person, but I can understand the fascination of the profession. Luck was with me, and in less than thirty minutes after meeting her I was pretty sure Madeleine Swink was not in love with Harrie and was in love with some one else. A few minutes later I found out who she was in love with, found he was equally in love with her; that they were once engaged and still want to get married. Our job's to help them do it."
Selwyn's seriousness is a heritage. Frowningly he looked at me. "This is hardly a thing to jest about. I may be very dense, but I fail to understand—"
For an hour we talked of Madeleine Swink and Mrs. Swink, of Harrie and Tom Cressy, and in terms which even a man could understand I told how my discoveries had been made, of how I had managed to see Tom and Madeleine together, and of my frank questioning of the former. But what I did not tell him was that my thought was not of them alone. By my side the little girl with the baby in her arms had seemed clinging to my skirt.
"What sort of a girl is she?" In Selwyn's voice was relief and anxiety. "Has she courage enough to take things in her own hands? I've no conscience so far as her mother is concerned. She deserves no consideration, but, being an interested party, I—"
"You needn't have anything to do with it. I'm not sure what sort she is, or how much courage she's got, but worms have been known to turn. If a hundred years before they were born somebody had begun to train her parents to be proper parents she might have been a better product, still there seems to be something to her. For Tom's sake I hope so."
"He's a nice chap." Selwyn's voice was unqualifiedly emphatic. "And his father is as honest a man as ever lived. His mother, I believe, comes of pretty plain people."
"I don't know where she comes from, but she's made a success of her son, which is what a good many well-born women fail to do. People aren't responsible for their ancestors, but they are for their descendants to a great extent, and Mrs. Cressy seems to understand this more clearly than certain ancestrally dependent persons I have met. I'd like to know her."